Battle of Hagenohsen

The Battle of Hagenohsen (April 1945) was a battle of World War II that occurred when a lone US Army tank, Fury, held off an SS battalion of 200-300 men for an entire night. Led by Staff Sergeant Don Collier, the 5-man crew defended the immobilized tank with machine guns, grenades, the tank turret, and their own firearms, and they literally fought to the last man; Private Norman Ellison was the only survivor of the standoff, and he survived after Collier told him to hide under the tank as he was killed by grenades.

Battle
After the capture of Kirchohsen by elements of the US 2nd Armored Division, Sergeant Don Collier received orders to move his four-tank armored platoon to defend the crossroads near Hagenohsen in order to protect 1,000 nurses and non-combat personnel who were encamped back at Emmerthal. The four tanks were ambushed by an SS Tiger I panzer as they left Kirchohsen, and three of the tanks were destroyed before the surviving tank, Collier's Fury, destroyed the Tiger. Fury ultimately made it to the crossroads, only to run over a mine which disabled its treads. Tank crewman Norman Ellison was sent on outpost duty on a hill down the road to scout for the enemy as the other tank crewmembers waited in their tank. Ellison spotted a battalion of 200-300 German soldiers marching and singing, so he ran back to Collier and gave him a report; Collier determined that they were SS soldiers, meaning that they would not give up without a hard fight. Collier was determined to hold the crossroads, even if it meant going it alone, and he managed to persuade his loyal crewmates Boyd Swan, Trini Garcia, Grady Travis, and Ellison to stay with him. They disguised the tank as badly damaged and knocked out, taking a German body from the adjacent aid station and lighting it on fire in front of the tank. The crew members then slugged down alcohol as they prepared for their last stand.

The SS soldiers approached the tank, and they were ordered to open the hatch. When they did, they came under submachine gun fire, and the Americans took the SS soldiers by surprise. They used their own firearms as well as the machine guns on the tank and the cannon, blowing up the German vehicles and cutting down scores of German infantrymen. The Americans inflicted heavy losses before they began to run out of ammunition, and Travis was killed when a Panzerfaust round went through the tank and into his stomach. Garcia sacrificed himself by smothering his own dropped grenade with his body, and a disoriented Swan was shot in the head by a German sniper as he poked his head out of the hatch to give Collier (who was manning the external machine gun) grenades. This left just Collier and Ellison in the tank, and Collier was severely wounded by gunfire and forced inside the tank. Ellison was told to use the escape hatch on the bottom of the tank and hide in the crater underneath the tank, while the immobilized Collier was killed when German troops threw stick grenades into the tank. A young Waffen-SS soldier noticed Ellison under the tank, but he knew that he was also defenseless and a young soldier fighting in a war that was not his, and he decided not to report him to his fellow soldiers, sparing him. The next morning, US Army troops arrived at the site of the battle, and medics rescued Ellison, who was called a hero. Hundreds of German troops had been taken down by just five men in one tank, an exceptional display of bravery.